Sunday, August 03, 2014

Why You Should Never Go to STEM Grad School

From our STEM Advanced Degreed Agent in the Field:

I just read your book “Bachelor Pad Economics” and
discovered your other work; I thought it was great.I’ve done pretty well for myself so far but I
still wish I had that book years ago.I
would like to share my story about grad school in STEM.Don’t worry, there’s a happy ending – sort of
– but I wanted to share my experience with others and invite you to comment.

I grew up in a blue collar family in the mid-west and didn’t
have much of money to go to college, so for my undergraduate I went to the satellite
campus for a larger university that was about an hour from my parent’s house.I decided to study computer science and I had
won some great scholarships that covered the cost of tuition.I did very well in the program and despite
not having attended a big name school, I was able to score some paid
internships with a large and prestigious tech company.In my senior year I had great grades, more
than a year’s work experience in the field, more money in the bank than when I
started, and a sunny and idealistic outlook.All of my professors said that I should go to grad school though and so
instead of going to work upon graduation I went over to main campus to pursue
my master’s degree.

First thing first, never go to grad school just because you
are smart and hardworking enough to get in.In grad school you need to focus on a narrow subtopic of your field and
do “original research” so that you can publish journal papers that hardly
anyone reads and beg the government for grant money.You do this research under an adviser, who is
basically a manager. Your adviser
provides you with lab space, finds sources of government funding, signs off on
your coursework and thesis, tries to micromanage you, and then takes credit for
your research despite not knowing the first thing about it.You should start looking for an adviser
before picking a grad school to make sure you are actually interested in the
research the lab is engaged in.In my
case, my adviser sold me on a bill of goods about applying artificial
intelligence to medical research being done at a more prestigious university.In reality, he didn’t have a clue what these
medical researchers were actually doing, he just had a friend who was doing a
postdoc – that’s when you have a PhD but instead of finding a real job you work
under a professor doing research – in that lab, and they were willing to accept
me as free labor.By the time I realized
that I wasn’t going to be working on anything like what had been described to
me, it would have been politically difficult to back out because my adviser had
already bragged to the dean that he had established a collaborative research
project with this other university.Basically, I ended up finding some little niche where I could write
computer programs that processed some data that the MDs couldn’t.The work was incredibly tedious at times, and
it wasn’t anything like what I had been sold on, but at least I was able to
squeeze a thesis out of it and get the hell out of dodge.

My adviser used various forms of manipulation to pressure me
to go get a PhD.He even asserted that it
wouldn’t overqualify me for any jobs, which I knew for a fact to be utter nonsense.If you have a PhD that focuses on an area
that isn’t applicable to the job you’re applying for, most big companies won’t
consider you.I decided to find a job
with the company I had interned with as an undergrad.When my adviser found out, he added a requirement
that I write another paper before he would allow me to defend my thesis.This delayed me by several months, resulted
in me spending my last couple of weeks in grad school basically homeless and crashing on other people’s
couches, and forced
me to spend my last summer before starting work cooped up in a windowless room
trying to throw together some nonsense paper.

It’s not to say it was all bad.I actually enjoyed being a teaching assistant.I would routinely get comments from students
that I explained the material much better than the professors.I lost something though, and not just the two
years of my youth it had taken me to complete the program.The whole thing made me much more bitter and cynical.I got to see how professors really spend most
of their time begging for grant money rather than teaching students or doing
research themselves. I got to see how a
lot of these professors care more about prestige than actually advancing the
frontiers of human knowledge.I got to
see how universities will spare no expense in building and updating facilities
that parents and prospective students see during their campus tour but never
seem to have enough money to buy quality equipment for student labs.By chance, I actually got to overhear a
conversation about hiring a new faculty member in which the only thing that was
discussed was the effects on the department’s diversity rather than the
qualifications of the different candidates.

Now that’s all over though, I’m making plenty of money and
living comfortably.Yes, I still deal
with the typical corporate bullshit and I have to put up with Orwellian pandering
to women and minorities.A great example
of this is the time when I was struggling to secure approval for necessary
business travel while the company was flying women from around the world down
to some “women in engineering” event – which from what I could gather consisted
of a bunch of ego-stroking talks about how victimized they all are followed by
a trip south of the border to party and shoot tequila.It doesn’t help that I’m now living in a liberal
namby-pamby state either, but at least there is still the internet where
people are willing to talk plain truth.All I
need to do now is get to a point where I’m financially independent and finally
say “fuck you” to all of this nonsense.

When I left university I first worked for a temping agency (is it the same term in the USA? Temporary work) and ended up in an insurance company office for the three months until I got a career job. This was in fact just after I turned down a PhD place in geophysics, mainly because I knew I did not have the dedication required.

The office was a good stop-gap and was full of recent graduates, but the manager, AE, had been there three years and been taken on permanently. AE had a PhD studying liquid crystals, an important and current field in 1995. He had thought it a field that needed research and would lead to a good job. He was the one stuck.

All of the real/true research goes on in gov. labs. Darpa, NSA, and agencies that no one will acknowledge the existence of. Crony companies like M$ will be allowed to introduce this new technology to the so called marketplace due to their connections to the elite. This idea of universities performing meaningful research should be classified as an implausible "conspiracy theory" or better yet, a con job.

I have an MS and I think it is an OK thing to do. If you can complete it in less than two years you will get paid more than equivalent experience and get a tad more respect in today's over- credentialed world. The OP's advisor was an ass, but the solution to that is to select/change to an advisor who is not an ass. It is the same with avoiding bad managers/customers etc.

Also, you are under no obligation to tell a potential employer you have a PhD - it would be impossible for them to prove due to FERPA etc. so you would not be overqualified. I would not advise one to get a PhD in order to go into industry, but some do OK.

I experienced everything that he did. I would add that dealing with professors and administrators is like being in junior high school again. It was unbelievable to me that 50 and 60-year old men were acting like children when the 'good' office became available. And those people are the biggest liars I have ever met in my life.

In my final year of University I walked up to the Information desk.Me: "Could you please direct me to the men's room"Woman: "It's behind you"Me: "No, that's the men's toilet. You have a Womyn's room, why not a Myn's room?"Woman: "Men don't need a room".Me: " OK, where's the Straight room? There's a Queer room..."Woman: "Straight people don't need a room".Me: "OK, where's the white room? You've got a room for every race on the planet".Woman: "We don't need one".Me: "OK, what about an Atheist room? There's a room for every belief on the planet, and there are heaps of atheists."Woman: "No".Me: " So you're saying that, as a straight, white male atheist there are no facilities available for me?"Woman: "You're in the majority, so you don't need anywhere to go"

I should have asked for a fee reduction as I was clearly getting less services than most other student.

I saw all of this 30 years ago when I was a molecular biologist with an MSc. I turned down 3 offers for a free ride PhD because I didn't feel like working 70-80 hour weeks as a postdoc making less that what I was making as a lab rat.

It depends on your degree. There is a lot of variation in STEM. As for Civil and Mechanical Engineering there is little need for a masters, at least until you get some actual work experience. At that point many employers will pay for it while you are working. Unless you want to be a professor (why?) there is not much need to get a phd.

I'd say it depends. I have a electrical engineering and environmental engineering background. The EVEN got paid for with tax dollars, and I got to not work that hard another 3 years. I also thought at the time I could use the EE/EVEN to apply to companies that sold pollution control equipment. Anyway, it was not bad.

One thought I've had is that if you do another degree in another field, maybe do a thesis that requires to analyze large datasets with R or some statistical package. Know how to use R and computers well. This knowledge can apply to other sectors other than engineering.

Anyone who thinks grad school is not primarily about money and peer-reviewed publications for the major professor is a fool. I had one "rising star" professor at a prominent public university tell me "every publication costs me $75,000 in research funds." Never a mention of the quality, intellect or character of the grad students. If a GS brings in their own funding they get a degree - that saves the prof from having to write a grant proposal. Welcome to the 21st Century. Gotta love those PhDs.